The Best of Every 📧

Don’t—write for them instead

«We live in an era defined by the death of one form of expertise—that of writers and publishers, establishing the norms—and the rise of a new one—that of experts speaking directly to their audiences.»

Avoid the messy middle and aim for unambiguous results

Cofounder drama is the secret startup killer

A dispatch from the wild, vicious world of consumer payments

Embrace ‘state over story’ to shift your thoughts and overcome anxiety

«There are various cues to watch for to see if your body is downshifting gears into parasympathetic. The most obvious is a spontaneous sigh response,»

Japeth Mast / Unsplash Content warning: stress, and anxiety.In fourth grade my teacher referred to me in a report card as a “nutty professor.” The verdict from the elementary academy was clear: Head…

«I developed a strategy: worry. If I knew a test was coming up, I would deliberately think about all of the bad things that would happen if I didn’t do well on it. I’d imagine getting the grade, and how my parents would react to it. I’d imagine what it would mean about my future, or what it would mean about the kind of person I was. »

Tracing the rise of the robot mind

I loaded journal entries from the past 10 years into GPT-3—and started asking it questions

Excerpt from the new book Global Natives

The burden of missed expectations

A Guide to Doing Great Work without Fixating on Flawlessness

«rigidity is the problem, not the desire to do great work»

How GPT-3 will turn your notes into an *actual* second brain

«there’s a lot of value locked up in what we’ve collected over the years, if we could just figure out how to use it.»

My slow and steady progression to living out the plot of the movie 'Her'

«You don’t read through your old entries that often, so the act of writing down your thoughts and experiences doesn’t compound in the way that it should.»

It’s overrated—both financially and emotionally

Smaller, faster, cheaper, weirder

«it’s exciting to think that AI might be able to do almost anything, but it feels guided more by magical thinking than by concrete observations.»

Practical tips to help you connect more deeply with others

Actionable ideas from an event with Adam Davidson

«Who is the protagonist (maybe it’s you, maybe it’s someone else)  Where and when are they?  What do they want?  Why does the outcome matter?»

Supply, Demand, and Memes. Lots of Memes.

Even if a token has a great supply model, it still needs a good reason to exist and for people to hold it.

Five lesser-known benefits of thinking out loud

My slow and steady progression to living out the plot of the movie 'Her'

«I started in the OpenAI playground—a text box where you input a prompt that tells GPT-3 how you want it to behave, and then interact with it:»

Tips for dealing with criticism—when you agree with it, and when you don’t

«In these more educational environments, where no one expects me to be perfect, negative feedback is reframed. It’s not criticism; it’s teaching.»

Give yourself the space to be inspired

«we get so caught up in the daily grind, in the pursuit of the next step of the ladder, that we miss the point of being.»

The practice of connecting intentions to outcomes

«Simply put, being strategic means that the outcomes produced by our actions are not at odds with our intentions. »

The science of creativity—and how to unlock it

«Creativity is the ability to produce an artifact or an idea that is both novel and useful given a particular social context»

It's a state, not an outcome.

«People think focus is about the thing you’re focused on. But it’s actually about putting aside the big shiny, exciting things you could be working on.»